College Football Playoff/NFL Saturday Thread
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So, the NFL is pissed that the NCAA is playing its first ever big 12 team playoff weekend on the Saturday before Christmas, traditionally a time when the NFL plays a couple of Saturday games. So they placed the two biggest games of the weekend on Saturday, both to show the NCAA who has the biggest dick, but also so that a different combination of those four teams can play on Christmas Day. So going up against the playoff is Chiefs-Texans and Ravens-Steelers. Oh, is that all? I believe Scott will have another football open thread post a bit later, but I will at least briefly discuss the Chiefs-Texans game at the end here.
What I am super curious about is the ratings. Those are big NFL games. But people have waited for the 12 team playoff for so many years and there are a lot of big fanbases who are going to be all over these games, whether they are playing today or have a bye. That includes the fan bases of Notre Dame, Oregon, Georgia, Tennessee, Clemson, Texas, Ohio State, and Penn State. Going to be hard for Steelers/Nittany Lions fans! But two of these games are on TNT, who won a bid for the playoffs despite not showing any college football games during the regular season. Will the casual fan know to look there?
First, last night’s game. OK, Notre Dame was the better team. By a lot. Enough said.
#11 SMU at #6 Penn State (-9) 12, TNT. I love SMU here. Maybe not to win, but to cover that spread. First, SMU can score some points. Second, PENN STATE NEVER EVER EVER EVER WINS A BIG GAME. I cannot state this enough. Everyone in the country, especially Penn State fans, needs James Franklin to prove he can win anything like a big game. And I’m not sure this will be enough either. SMU has mostly dominated its opponents, though the ACC is nothing special this year. It did fall to Clemson in the title game, but it had a huge comeback after a bad start and lost on an extremely long field goal. I don’t know how bad they felt about that, but they deserve to be here. Can they win at a cold and snowy Penn State? That’s a good question. Can be tough for a Dallas team to play in that cold. Meanwhile, Penn State is still the team that lost fairly easily to both the good teams they played and whose best win remains Illinois and who barely beat Minnesota late in the season. I like Drew Allar, but Penn State lost their backup QB to the portal when Allar chose to return next year and they had a whole set of running packages for that guy, so it really makes them worse. So I’m taking SMU +9 here, if not the win.
#12 Clemson at #5 Texas (-13), 4, TNT. I think this is a more interesting matchup than the bettors do. It’s true that Texas has been good unless they are playing Georgia. But then Quinn Ewers just isn’t really that great. Clemson has turned their season around big time and earned that playoff seed the hard way. They’ve looked good in recent weeks and a close loss to South Carolina, the best team not in the playoffs, is nothing to be ashamed of. My concern for Texas is an offense that’s been pretty mediocre the second half of the season. Plus Steve Sarkisian never makes me feel confident. I like Texas at home, but -13 seems too much.
#9 Tennessee at #8 Ohio State (-7), 8, ABC. This is the big game and I don’t see why Ohio State is favored by 7. The arguments in favor of it is that they are better and are at home. Sure, OK. I get that. But the loss to Michigan made that whole team pop like a balloon. Will Howard is a mediocre QB at best and Ryan Day kind of threw him under the bus after the game. Meanwhile, the entire Ohio State fan base wanted to throw Day under a bus and he seems so damn unhappy to be there that people speculated he might outright quit. He won’t, why would he? But still, that’s the attitude behind the team that probably has the most raw talent in the country. Meanwhile, Tennessee’s offense is a bit of a work in progress still, but their defense is strong. The most points they gave up all year is 31 in the loss to Georgia, otherwise it’s 23 in the last game against Vanderbilt and they won that one going away. If Howard screws up–and he does seem to freeze when it counts–that defense will kill him. So yeah, I’m not just taking Tennessee +7, I’m taking the Vols to win.
As for the Texans at Chiefs (-3.5), 1, NBC, the interesting question is can Mahomes move? The only reason this team is 13-1 is that Mahomes has magic in his legs and just pulls it out at the very end. If he doesn’t have that? Their offense can’t do anything else. But then the Texans offense has been mediocre this year too. Hopefully Houston brings this overrated KC team down to earth, but who would bet against Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes?